Alliance is a professional gaming and esports group based in Sweden that was created in April 2013. In December 2016, the group announced it had become owned by its players after leaving its parent company, GoodGame, which was owned by Amazon through its company Twitch. The Dota 2 team won The International 2013, which was the largest prize in esports history. The League of Legends team is one of five teams that won a season of the European League of Legends Championship Series along with Fnatic, G2 Esports, Mad Lions, and Rogue.
History
The organization was created in April 2013. It added the Dota 2 team No Tidehunter and the StarCraft II player Naniwa.
In December 2013, the organization began competing in League of Legends. The team played in the European League of Legends Championship Series. In November 2014, they joined Super Smash Bros. by signing Armada, a player known for using characters Fox and Peach.
In July 2014, the organization stopped supporting StarCraft II after its last player, SortOf, left. In January 2015, the League of Legends team changed its name to Elements. This was required because the League of Legends Championship Series rules did not allow GoodGame Agency to own more than one team.
On December 12, 2016, Twitch separated Evil Geniuses and Alliance into player-owned groups. Alliance member Jonathan Berg stated that all original members, including Armada, received a share of the company.
In April 2024, the team changed its branding. They used more green in their designs and introduced a new logo shaped like the letter "A." They also chose Rattio, a rat that looks like a human, as their new mascot.
Dota 2
A few months after joining Alliance, the Dota 2 team won The International 2013 by defeating Natus Vincere, who had previously won The International, in the final match with a score of 3–2. The team completed the group stages with a perfect 14–0 record and only lost three games during the entire tournament (losing one game to Team DK and two games to Natus Vincere).
At The International 2014, the defending champions did not advance past the group stages, finishing tied for 11th place with a 6–9 record. After the tournament, the team’s stable group of players changed, with Gustav "s4" Magnusson, Henrik "AdmiralBulldog" Ahnberg, and Jerry "EGM" Lundkvist leaving the team.
During the Starladder i-League tournament, Alliance announced that MyNuts had left the team. They used Kebap as a temporary replacement for their match against Virtus.Pro. The team welcomed EGM, a former teammate, back to Alliance.
The team later won the WCA tournament, which was the largest prize pool event not organized by Valve, by defeating LGD in a best-of-five series with a score of 3–2. After this, they traveled to Starladder but faced challenges due to weather issues. Despite a difficult start, they defeated Evil Geniuses, who had won The International, in a best-of-three final with a score of 2–0. Following these two victories, the team decided to leave upcoming tournaments to focus on the Shanghai Major.
The team separated after the sixth The International, with AdmiralBulldog retiring to become a full-time streamer, Akke retiring to pursue programming, and s4 joining OG. s4 later won the Boston Major and the Kiev Major after leaving Alliance for OG.
After the team reorganized following The International 6, they included former players from Ninjas in Pajamas, such as Limmp, Handsken, and Jonassomfan, as well as Loda and EGM. This team had limited success, failing to qualify for major events during the The International 6 to The International 7 season. This led to EGM being removed from the team on the last day of the "Drop period" before The International 7 rosters were finalized. They added Pablo as his replacement. After The International 2017, for which Alliance did not qualify, the team announced that Simon "Handsken" Haag, Linus "Limmp" Blomdin, and Jonas "jonassomfan" Lindholm would leave the team.
On April 10, 2023, the Alliance Cybersports organization announced on its official website that the Alliance.LATAM lineup, which played in the South American DPC, had left the organization.
League of Legends
The Alliance League of Legends team was formed in December 2013. It took the place of the Evil Geniuses team in the European League of Legends Championship Series after Evil Geniuses moved to the North American LCS.
During the Spring Split, Alliance finished 3rd in the regular season with a 16–12 record, behind SK Gaming and Fnatic. Henrik “Froggen” Hansen, Alliance’s mid-laner, was named the Spring Split’s most valuable player, receiving 28% of the votes. In the playoffs, Alliance finished 4th, losing to Fnatic in the semifinals 2–1 and then losing to ROCCAT 2–0 in the 3rd place game.
In the Summer Split, Alliance led the regular season with a 21–7 record. They won the playoffs by defeating Fnatic 3–1 in the finals, earning a spot in the 2014 League of Legends World Championship. At the World Championship, Alliance finished 3rd in their group and did not advance to the knockout stage. They were defeated by the Brazilian team KaBuM! e-Sports, which prevented them from competing in a tiebreaker to move forward.
At Intel Extreme Masters San Jose, the team was eliminated by Cloud9.
On November 24, 2014, Alliance added Martin “Rekkles” Larsson to their roster. After a change in Riot Games’ sponsorship rules, Alliance LoL left the organization and rebranded as Elements.
Elements was formed in January 2015 from Alliance’s League of Legends roster after rebranding due to new sponsorship rules following the 2014 season. The initial roster included Wickd, Shook, Froggen, Rekkles, and Nyph.
After a 4–4 record at the end of the fourth week of the Spring Split, Elements replaced Wickd with Kevin “kev1n” Rubiszewski, a former Millenium top laner. In the sixth week, they replaced Nyph with Krepo, a former Evil Geniuses support who had previously played with Froggen on CLG.EU and EG. Nyph stayed with the team as an assistant coach. One week later, Wickd returned to the top lane, and kev1n became a substitute. Nyph took over as the new head coach during the picks and bans phase.
Elements finished 7th in the EU Spring LCS regular season with a 7–11 record and did not qualify for the playoffs.
In April, Rekkles left the team and was replaced at AD Carry by Erik “Tabzz” Van Helvert.
For the Summer 2015 Split, Elements changed four players on their roster.
In early May 2016, the German football club FC Schalke 04 purchased Element’s LCS spot.
In late 2024, Alliance participated in the Wildz Invitational, an event organized by Rootz Ltd.